Influence of environmental policies on farmland prices in the Bretagne region of France

The Bretagne region is an agricultural area located in the north-west of France. In addition to urban pressure, the competition for farmland is enhanced by strong environmental regulations and incentives. The objective of this paper is to study the determinants of farmland prices and especially the effects of environmental regulations to explain the spatial disparities of prices observed in Bretagne. Several environmental regulations policies have been implemented in the Bretagne region, which resulted in a complex zoning system with specific measures. To take into account this local characteristic, we use the hedonic pricing model and focus our attention on the potential spatial dependencies between farmland prices. For empirical application, we use a dataset of individual transactions in Bretagne from 2007 to 2010. The estimation results show an increase or a decrease in farmland prices in environmentally sensitive areas depending on the types of regulations applied in these areas.